$120 Million Damage Award For Sexual Abuse by Priest

By PETER STEINFELS

Published: July 25, 1997

Correction Appended

A Dallas jury awarded $120 million in damages yesterday after finding that the local Roman Catholic diocese had ignored evidence that a priest was sexually abusing boys and that it had then tried to cover up the abuses.

William Ryan, a spokesman for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, said the award was ''almost certainly the largest judgment that had been made against the church'' in a sexual abuse case.

Randal Mathis, a lawyer for the Diocese of Dallas, has argued that diocesan officials used reasonable care in supervising the priest, the Rev. Rudolph Kos, even if their decisions later proved to be wrong. The diocese will appeal the verdict, Mr. Mathis said, a process that may take from three to five years.

''It's got a long way to go,'' one of the plaintiffs, Shawn Johnson, said yesterday. ''It's been difficult to go public but necessary for the welfare of children. The important thing for us was to bring this issue out and not let the church cover this up.''

The damages were to be paid by the diocese and Father Kos, 52, who was suspended from the priesthood five years ago. But he is not considered to be solvent under Texas law, so the church will be liable for virtually the full amount, Mr. Mathis said.

Windle Turley, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said the judgment might eventually reach $145 million because interest calculated from the time the suit was filed three years ago would be added.

Father Kos, who now lives in San Diego and works as a paralegal, did not defend himself in the civil trial, but he has publicly denied some of the accusations. He still faces criminal charges of sexual abuse of two of the plaintiffs.

The plaintiffs -- 10 men and the family of a man who committed suicide at the age of 20 -- said the abuses occurred between 1977 and 1992 while Kos was a student at Holy Trinity Seminary in Dallas and while he was assigned to three churches.

They charged that a reasonable investigation by church officials would have revealed that the seminary applicant had served a year in a juvenile detention center for molesting a neighbor. He had also entered a marriage that was annulled by the diocese's marriage tribunal, and Kathleen Hetzel, his ex-wife, said in a deposition that she had informed a tribunal official of her former husband's sexual interest in boys.

The diocesan marriage tribunal official, the Rev. Gerald Hughes, denied at the trial that she had told him that Father Kos was attracted to boys.

The plaintiffs pointed to a series of warnings and complaints about Father Kos's proclivities that came from other priests throughout the late 1980's. Despite these, the priest was made a pastor in 1988.

Mr. Mathis, the diocese's lawyer, maintained during the trial that diocesan officials had made what they ''thought were appropriate, fair and reasonable judgments.'' Father Kos was ''a criminal who belongs in jail,'' Mr. Mathis said, but he was also ''a very convincing man.''

Diocesan officials have stated that they could not mount a full-scale investigation without a direct complaint from a victim and that they suspended him promptly when the first such complaint came in 1992.

Earlier this month Bishop Charles Grahmann of Dallas told a group of Catholics, ''Sometimes we are not alert, not on guard,'' and he said victims of abuse ''need our sincere apology.'' After the verdict yesterday, Michael McGee, a diocesan spokesman, said ''who we're worried first about are the victims and their families.''

Father Kos was accused of molesting altar boys, some as young as 9, in three Dallas parishes. One plaintiff reported being sexually abused several times a week for years, starting when he was 13. Another plaintiff had lived with Father Kos for two years in the priest's parish residence; the public explanation was that Father Kos had legally adopted him.

During 11 weeks of testimony, the jury heard extensive descriptions of the psychological damage that the plaintiffs said had been caused by the sexual abuse. The plaintiffs were asking for $146.5 million in damages for past and future medical care, lost earnings and mental anguish. The jury ultimately awarded them $102 million for such damages, and $18 million for punitive damages.

The jury devised a complex formula that split the blame between the church and the priest and determined the shares of the award that each would pay in each plaintiff's case. In different cases the diocese was judged to bear anywhere from 50 to 85 percent of the responsibility, but will probably end up being responsible for paying the full amount of the damage award.

The painful nature of much of the plaintiff's testimony was underlined Monday by the unusual conduct of Anne Ashby, the state district judge hearing the case.

After final arguments were heard and the jurors were dismissed for the day, Judge Ashby removed her robe, took a seat in the jury box and told the plaintiffs, ''I've been so close to your tragedy it just breaks my heart.

''Everybody in this courtroom has been grieving,'' she said. ''If anything like this can ever be positive, then let there be healing and let there be hope.''

Although a number of cases have lingered in the courts, the question of sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests has been less visible since 1995, when widely publicized accusations against the late Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, Archbishop of Chicago, were retracted and many people came to believe that the news media's treatment of the topic had become irresponsible.

But the judgment against the Dallas diocese, where two other cases of sexual abuse by priests are pending, is likely to revive concern that the problem is far from resolved.

Photo: Nathan Nichols and other plaintiffs embraced after the Dallas Roman Catholic Diocese was found liable for sexual abuse by a priest. (Associated Press)

Correction: July 29, 1997, Tuesday An article on Friday about a jury award of $120 million after a finding that the Roman Catholic Diocese of Dallas had tried to cover up evidence that a priest was sexually abusing boys misidentified a member of the diocese's marriage tribunal who denied at the trial that the priest's ex-wife had told him that her former husband was attracted to boys. He was the Rev. Leon Duesman, not the Rev. Gerald Hughes.